


grape-dark clouds and brittle frost

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Swan Queen Week, in which Emma comes to Storybrooke a little early, season one AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-02 02:54:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11500281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: Written for Swan Queen Week, Mommy in Love.What I know about the day I was born, a list by Henry Daniel Mills:1) I was born in Storybrooke General Hospital.2) Mom adopted me right away.3) It must have been a closed adoption.4) Did the agency in Boston ever exist?5) My birth mother is in Storybrooke somewhere.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This got super long so I split it into three parts! I'll update weekly or maybe more often, depending on how quickly people manage to read each part. I don't want to overwhelm everyone LMAO. 
> 
> This was supposed to be a simple story about Henry watching his moms fall in love, but it wound up a total S1 AU (without the curse? with the curse? Who Knows) where I fix a lot of the stuff that stresses me out about S1. The Swan Queen increases over time, promise. I hope you enjoy!!

_ Mom Totally Likes Emma Swan,  a list by Henry Daniel Mills: _

  1. _Sometimes Mom sits at Emma’s table when Granny’s is full. (Sometimes Mom lets Emma sit at OUR table, too. And she once threatened Dr. Hopper’s life for trying that.)_
  2. _That time Emma got hurt and we visited her in the hospital with a stuffed bear. (Because Mom insisted! I wanted to bring chocolate.)_
  3. _Last week, Emma made a really bad joke and Mom still smiled a little before she elbowed her. (Emma elbowed Mom back and Mom didn’t murder her.)_
  4. _Mom smiles around her sometimes. (Like Mom used to smile at me.)_
  5. _Mom invites Emma to my birthday party every single year and Emma comes._



 

Emma still has the stuffed bear. It sits in the front seat of her patrol car with its little police uniform, and she only moves it when she has a passenger who isn’t getting arrested. Henry knows this because he’s currently in said patrol car, hugging the bear to him as Emma drives them back toward Storybrooke.

 

He’s in a lot of trouble, he thinks. When he’d called home from outside where the adoption agency had been, the lady who’d loaned him a phone looking down at him disapprovingly, Mom’s voice had been tight and teary.  _ I’m sending Emma,  _ she’d said, and she hadn’t said  _ I love you  _ or  _ I was worried  _ or anything more.

 

He doesn’t know if he’d wanted her to say anything else. He’d told himself that he hadn’t, and he’d gone to the closest police station like Mom had ordered and waited for Emma there.

 

Emma hadn’t said a word about him running away when she’d seen him. She’d stepped into the station and he’d watched her from across the room, scared and tired and sad, and she’d waited for him to stand and then wrapped an arm around him and walked him to her patrol car.

 

She doesn’t talk when they get into the car, and then he falls asleep for what must be hours and wakes up when they’re already in Maine. There’s silence for a long time, and Henry thinks that Emma must not know that he’s awake until she says, “Ready to tell me why you ran?” 

 

Henry shrugs, shaking off the last bits of sleep. “It doesn’t matter,” he says dully. The agency is gone. It had taken him weeks to figure out where Mom had gone to adopt him, and now his last lead is gone. Emma doesn’t respond, waiting for an answer, and Henry caves. “I went to the agency my adoption went through.” 

 

Emma’s hands tighten around the steering wheel, and she says, “And?” 

 

“It’s gone now.” Henry shrugs, because it isn’t supposed to matter anymore. Emma tosses a glance at him like maybe it does. “And Regina isn’t going to tell me,” he says boldly. It’s an act of defiance, calling Mom something other than  _ Mom _ . She’s not his real mom. She  _ lied _ , and she doesn’t get to be  _ Mom  _ anymore because of it.

 

But Emma looks at him once and he’s instantly ashamed. “Is my mom really mad, Sheriff?” he says, burrowing into his seat and twisting the bear’s police jacket between his fingers. 

 

Emma softens. “You can call me Emma, kid. I’ve known you all your life.” She says it with a note to it that Henry doesn’t quite understand, but it makes him sad, somehow. “And maybe a little. I think she’s mostly happy that you’re okay. We all are.” She reaches over and touches his arm, tentative, and she snatches her hand back after a moment. “You really scared us there.” 

 

Henry stares out the windshield, and a part of him thinks  _ good _ .  _ Good _ , Mom deserves this for lying to him.  _ Good,  _ except now all he can think about is Mom crying– crying like she hasn’t since the time he’d broken his leg on a class trip and he’d awakened in a hospital bed to Mom curled up on the chair beside him with tears running down her cheeks. 

 

Nowadays, when they fight it’s cold and distant, and when Henry shouts, Mom’s face gets stiff and she sends him to his room. He doesn’t know what happens next. He wonders if Mom cries then, too.

 

_ Good _ . 

 

_ Good. _

 

Emma says, “You know I was left on the side of the road around here as a baby.” She points at a diner as they coast past it. Henry remembers it from the way to Boston. They’re pretty close to home.

 

He stares out the window. “Are you gonna tell me that I’m lucky to have a mom?” He wouldn’t listen to that from anyone but Emma, maybe. Emma came to town eleven years ago, when Mom was just back from college and working as the mayor’s aide to Grandma, and Nick says he heard that Emma was supposed to go to  _ jail  _ but Mom was the one who worked it out with the police.

  

  1. _Mom totally saved Emma’s butt when she was a dumb kid._



 

Emma doesn’t say anything at first. Then she says, “That’s for you to decide, isn’t it?” Her voice is a little rough, and she swallows audibly as they drive into Storybrooke and down Main Street. “I remember…I remember when your mom adopted you. She wanted you more than anything.” 

 

That’s what adoption is supposed to mean, Henry thinks suddenly, being  _ wanted more than anything _ . “But she lied,” he says. “I was–” He thinks about the trip to Boston, about the big city with more people than he’d seen in his whole entire life. He thinks about a real mother, a mother who’d do it  _ right  _ when Mom never seems to. “I was so  _ scared _ ,” he says, hugging the bear back to him.

 

“We were all pretty scared,” Emma whispers, pulling up in front of his house, and she looks at him with a sheen of tears in her eyes when she gets out and opens the door for him. “We– your mom thought– we didn’t know if we’d ever see you again, Henry,” she says, and it’s easier to hug her than it is Mom, to throw his arms around someone who cries when she’s scared instead of her face turning frozen and sharp.

 

When he turns around, Mom is framed in the doorway, and she runs down the stoop to him as he shifts away from Emma. She wraps her arms around him like she doesn’t remember how to hug, awkward and alien and too tight, and Henry squeezes his eyes shut and makes his face expressionless when Mom pulls away to look at him, still gripping his shoulders.

 

“Henry,” she breathes, and her voice cracks. Henry clenches his fists and stands very still, and Mom’s face gets stiffer and darker. “Go upstairs to bed right now,” she says, her voice back to normal. Whatever  _ normal  _ is these days, cold and unfeeling. “You’re grounded.” 

 

“Fine,” he bites out, and he stomps into the house, almost relieved that this has played out exactly how he’d expected it to.

 

But he turns around at the bottom of the stairs in the foyer, glances back out the door and down the path to the patrol car, and Mom’s shoulders are slumped now when they’d been straight and proud before. Emma is standing close to Mom, her face shining with concern at whatever Mom has said or done, and when she puts a hand on Mom’s, Mom turns away from her, eyes dark.

 

* * *

  
  


_ Emma Swan Totally Likes Mom ,  a list by Henry Daniel Mills: _

  1. _Emma saves Mom those little puffy potato bites at all the town government events. (When she doesn’t eat them all by herself.)_
  2. _Emma always calls her Regina even though everyone else calls her Mayor Mills. (Except sometimes when she’s mad she calls Mom Madam Mayor and I’m pretty sure Mom secretly likes it.)_
  3. _That time teenagers graffitied our house on Halloween with rude words and Emma cleaned them all off herself so Mom wouldn’t have to see them in the morning._
  4. _Emma is really cool around everyone but is a total nerd around Mom._
  5. _Emma keeps that framed picture of the three of us from the Miner’s Day festival on her desk at work._
  6. _Mom invites Emma to my birthday party every single year and Emma comes._



 

Being grounded isn’t so bad during the week, because Mom works late most nights now and Henry can play all the video games he wants and eat dinner on the couch and she never knows as long as his homework is done. Mom never used to work late. When he was little, he would stop at her office on the way home from school and do his homework at the mayor’s desk beside her. 

 

He’d stopped coming by when everything had gotten hard between them. He’s pretty sure that Mom had started working late because of the same reason.

 

It’s when the weekend comes that the house starts to feel like a prison. Mom works from home on Saturdays, padding around the house in pajamas and making a pancake breakfast for them, and Henry eats in the oppressive silence of the kitchen, head down and face emotionless.

 

Mom says, her voice strained, “I’m sorry I wasn’t back until after your bedtime last night. Something came up–” 

 

“It’s okay,” Henry says, his fingers curling into his knees under the table. “I’m too old to be tucked in.”  _ And you’re not my mom, anyway,  _ he doesn’t say, but he can hear it in his voice like an ugly reality. Mom hears it, too, and she flinches away from him.

 

Henry has been considering for a while that she might be the Evil Queen from Miss Blanchard’s fairytale book. They look a bit alike, the same dark hair and pretty face, and Mom  _ does  _ hate Miss Blanchard a lot. But if she isn’t an Evil Queen, then he’s stuck with a dull guilt when he hurts her, and he knows that he hurts her when he says stuff like that.

 

Why should she be hurt, anyway? She’s not his real mother. And she  _ lied _ . She can’t really love him–

 

His throat is stopping up and he suddenly loses his appetite, and he stands up abruptly. “You’re not finished, dear,” Mom says, her face tight like she knows what he’s thinking. 

 

He stomps out of the room to her sharp  _ “Henry!” _ and makes a beeline for the stairs, hurrying back to his room and curling onto his bed so he can stare out blankly into space. He can hear Mom following, up the stairs and down the hall, but she only stands in the doorway to his room and doesn’t venture forward.

 

Henry imagines magic spells around the border of his room, meant to keep the Evil Queen from crossing into his domain to touch him. He imagines invisible barriers and guards at his door and everything in the world that would keep Mom away, but when he peeks out through his arm, he just sees her stricken, longing face. 

 

He wishes she’d come inside and hold him like she used to before the Lie. He wishes she’d go back downstairs and leave him alone. He wishes she’d  _ talk _ and tell him why she  _ lied _ – 

 

–He thinks of Emma whispering  _ we were all pretty scared _ , and  _ so what _ .  _ So what _ .

 

He lies in bed until he hears Mom go downstairs into her study and the door click closed, and he goes to the living room to watch cartoons once it’s safe. There’s a knock at the door a little before lunchtime, and Henry crosses his fingers and shuts his eyes, hoping, hoping–

 

It’s Emma at the door, hands shoved in her pockets and sheepish look on her face. “I brought your mom some reports. And lunch for both of you.” There’s a bag hanging from her arm with Granny’s brown takeout bags poking out from inside it, and Henry scoots to the side to let her in. “Still grounded?” she says as she sets her bag down and fishes through it. She emerges with a folder and the Granny’s bags.

 

Henry nods. “Until the end of time, if you ask my mom.” She isn’t angry, exactly. Henry doesn’t know how to read her anymore, and he can’t tell what it is that crosses her face when she thinks about Boston. Her face just gets hard like the ceramic bowl he’d made for Mother’s Day last year. He remembers how it had been so soft when they’d shaped it. When it had come out of the kiln, it had been hard and brittle and thin, like only one squeeze too tight would shatter it. 

 

He’s afraid of shattering Mom. He’s even more afraid that she wouldn’t shatter, that squeezing more would only make her harder and harder and unbreakable. 

 

Emma musses his hair and Henry leans into her touch, desperate for something that feels real. “I’ll be right back, okay?” she says. “Unless your Mom kicks my ass for coming over on a Saturday.” 

 

She disappears into the study and Henry flattens himself against the wall beside it, listening to Mom’s sharp  _ Emma?  _ and Emma’s quick excuse for coming. Mom exhales and says, “Well, that’s surprisingly conscientious of you.” Her amusement is stilted, strained, and Henry holds his breath. Mom and Emma are–  _ friends _ , almost, as close to friends as Mom is with anyone in town. Mom doesn’t talk to Emma like she does everyone else, but today, it sounds like she can barely bring herself to speak at all.

 

“I also wanted to check on you,” Emma murmurs, and Henry peeks into the room past the cracked open door and sees Emma’s eyes wide and earnest, her hand hovering over Mom’s on the desk. “I know it’s been…a rough week–” 

 

Mom’s face is impassive, cold again. “I don’t need you to check up on me, Miss Swan,” she says. Her voice is sharp now, sharp like  _ do your homework  _ and  _ we’re not talking about this right now, Henry _ . That voice is usually Henry’s cue to stomp out, but Emma doesn’t move.

 

“You have to  _ talk _ to him,” she says, her voice beseeching. “He’d listen if you’d just let him see how much you–” 

 

“Do  _ not  _ lecture me about how to raise  _ my son _ ,” Mom says, and now she sounds angry,  _ livid _ . “You have no right.  _ You  _ have no right.” 

 

Emma rocks on her heels, her fingers twisting together but her gaze determined. “Regina–”

“Get out,” Mom snarls. Her voice is quiet, dangerous, and Henry is afraid of her for the first time. “Get out of my house. Get  _ away _ from me.” 

 

“But–” 

 

“ _ Go! _ ” Emma turns, fleeing the room, and she walks blindly past Henry to the door. Henry doesn’t move from his spot just beside the door of the study, and he’s perfectly visible once the door is open. 

 

But Mom doesn’t notice him. She has her hands clasped over the sides of her head, looking very weary and small as she stares blankly at the reports that Emma had left her.

 

* * *

 

_ Mom is really the Evil Queen,  a list by Henry Daniel Mills: _

  1. _She really hates Miss Blanchard. Like, really hates her even though Miss Blanchard is super nice. And Miss Blanchard is totally Snow White._
  2. _She’s in charge of the whole town and she’s really good at it. (Experience from ruling a kingdom??)_
  3. _Lots of kids at school call her evil. (Not so many since Emma started coming to visit Miss Blanchard at lunchtime this year.)_
  4. _She pretends she thinks magic is stupid but she has all the Harry Potter books hidden in her room._
  5. _She loves apples. (Note to self: Stop eating Mom’s apple turnovers.)_
  6. _She lied to me._



 

The grounding lasts almost two weeks before Nick invites Henry for a sleepover Friday night and Mom agrees to it. He tells Nick that night about Mom being the Evil Queen, and Nick wants to know who he is. “Hansel, and Ava’s Gretel,” Henry says. He’s already thought about it. Henry plays the Blind Witch and they decide the bottom of the bunk bed is his oven, and Ava pushes him into it while he does his best cackle and pretends to burn into ash.

 

“Who are you?” Nick asks later that night, after Mom has called to check in and given him a strained goodnight. 

 

Henry stares at Nick’s ceiling, tracing the cracks in it that form the shape of a dragon. He wonders who Emma would have been in the fairytale. Maybe a dragon slayer sister of Snow White’s who isn’t afraid of the Evil Queen. “I’m not from here,” he says. “I’m not in the story.” 

 

Emma isn’t from here, either. She’s from the side of the road a few miles from town, and she’d never had a mom at all. He thinks about  _ that’s for you to decide  _ and Emma driving him past that diner and he thinks that if Mom would only talk to her, too, maybe then things would make sense again.

 

But Mom and Emma aren’t talking to each other anymore, really. They give each other curt nods at the diner and Emma only comes over to their table to say hello when Mom is at the counter. Henry stops at the station after school now that his grounding is over, and Emma is cranky more often than not, throwing darts and muttering under her breath. He knows it’s about Mom, because lots of what Emma does is about Mom, and because Mom is sad sometimes when she thinks he isn’t looking instead of just cold.

 

One Tuesday, Henry wakes up and the world is white outside his window, the town blanketed in freshly fallen snow. He forgets for a moment about the Lie between him and Mom and races downstairs, eyes bright and cheeks flushed as he bursts into the kitchen. “Snow day?” he says, breathless.

 

Mom smiles at him, startled and warm, and says, “I just got the call.” There’s a magic to a snowy morning, to throwing open the door to find the lawn unspoiled by footprints and the whole town quiet, and today can’t even be ruined by the stuff they’re not talking about. Mom helps bundle him up and gets on her own winter coat, long and dark and flowy like a cape, and she sits in a chair on the front porch with her gloved fingers around a mug of coffee while Henry builds a snowman. No, a fort. No, a–

 

He’s pressing snow into a bucket to create a brick when the patrol car pulls up on the newly plowed street and Emma emerges. Henry darts a glance at Mom, worried, but Mom is watching him where he is on the other side of the lawn and hasn’t turned away from him to notice their new arrival. 

 

Emma, meanwhile, pays no heed to Mom, just reaches into her back seat and emerges with a shovel. Mom notices her then, and she watches her silently, sipping her coffee as she waits. Emma doesn’t look at her. “Hey, Henry,” she calls, offering him a smaller shovel. “Want to help me out?” 

 

Henry bobs his head and takes the shovel, and they make a race of it, starting on opposite ends of the sidewalk and meeting in the middle. Emma wins, of course, and she shovels the path next, then starts the driveway. Mom has disappeared inside a long time ago.  _ Work _ ,  _ probably _ . It’s always work with Mom, especially on a snow day. 

 

It’s nearly lunchtime by the time they finish, but that’s because they keep getting distracted. Emma drops snow down Henry’s back and dodges away when he hurls a snowball at her, and she’s laughing, taunting him to  _ try again _ when a huge snowball crashes into her cheek. “Augh!” They both spin around, startled, and there’s Mom, calmly hoisting another huge snowball in her palm as she grins wickedly at Emma. 

 

There’s nothing like starting a fight to cheer up Mom, and some of the tension fades as Emma crouches down to make her own snowball. “You wouldn’t dare,” Mom breathes, and Henry remembers another winter two years ago when Emma had come by to shovel and Mom had already been in the snow with Henry, helping him with a snowman. They’d been nearly done when a gust of wind had blown the head off of the snowman and into Emma’s back, and Emma had doubled over and then immediately begun a snowball fight.

 

Mom had assigned Henry to a secret mission while she’d distracted Emma, hurling snowballs as though she’d been doing it all her life, and Henry had crept up behind Emma with an arsenal of his own and taken her by surprise. Emma had fallen dramatically to the ground at his strike, and Mom had planted a foot on her stomach and hadn’t let her get up until she’d come up with ten acceptable praises of the Kingdom of Mills.

 

Mom is watching Emma warily right now, and it’d be so easy to turn the tables on her, to do what he’d done when he’d been eight to the other side and recapture the magic of that day. But there are limits now, and he isn’t the same kid that he’d been when he was eight. And Emma isn’t the same anymore, either, because she drops the snow on the ground instead and shrugs a little, offering Mom a small smile.

 

Mom purses her lips together and doesn’t smile back. She says, “Take off your boots before you come inside,” and gestures to Emma almost grudgingly. It’s been weeks since Emma had last been in the house, since Mom had made her leave, and she steps inside with tentative movements, careful as though she’s afraid she might break something.

 

Henry follows the footprints of her wet socks, tiptoeing in the steps she’d made with the same care. But the kitchen is warm and there’s something in the oven, and there’s still a little bit of Something Special to the day, after all. Mom’s made them cocoa with cinnamon, which is Mom’s specialty and therefore both Henry’s and Emma’s favorite, and there’s apple pie in the oven.

 

Henry thinks about the Evil Queen for a moment before he bites into his apple pie, but Emma’s already eating it with gusto so it must be okay. It’s worth it, anyway. “This is the best pie I’ve ever tasted in my life,” Emma says fervently.

 

Mom’s forehead creases. “What’s wrong with my blueberry pie?” Emma sputters, stumbling over her own words as Mom hides a smile, and it’s  _ good  _ for a moment, this is  _ good _ like they never are anymore. They can be okay today, and Henry can almost trust it.

 

But eventually, there’s an emergency across town and Emma has to leave, tugging on her cold boots regretfully and giving them both the secret Emma-smile that she reserves just for them. Mom follows her to the door, and Henry peers through the doorway to watch Mom brush snow off of Emma’s hat and hesitate, the backs of her fingers running along Emma’s cheek. Emma puts her hand over Mom’s, their fingers lacing together, and she murmurs, “Thank you for the cocoa and pie.”

 

“Well, you did shovel for me.” Mom’s voice is still a little softer than it’s been in a long time. “I had to do something to repay you.” 

 

“We’re not keeping a ledger,” Emma says, and her eyes are so warm when she looks at Mom, so bare with affection that Henry’s afraid of what might happen if she ruins it. “If we were, I’d be doing chores here until I was old and grey and we’d still never be even.”

 

“Emma,” Mom says, and her voice is tight now, on the verge of tipping point. Henry doesn’t understand how they’d gotten there so quickly, how Emma’s eyes have gone downcast and lost as though she’d known she’d overstepped and how both of them turn for a moment to stare at Henry instead. 

 

Mom doesn’t turn back, just wraps her arms around herself and stares at him with hollow eyes as Emma does the same. “I’ll go,” Emma says lightly, and she sounds wistful. Mom doesn’t respond.

 

The magic from this morning has worn off, the untouched snow now lumpy and trodden, and Mom stands on the porch with her face closing off from Henry again. Henry’s angry, suddenly, frustrated and confused and he doesn’t know why, but he’s lifting a clump of snow before he can think about it, shaping it into a ball and hurling it directly at the center of his mother’s black winter coat. 

 

It hits her abdomen with unexpected accuracy, hard and fast, and Mom doubles over for a moment, her face startled and unguarded for a moment. Henry watches her with rising horror, dreading the reprimand he’s about to get, but Mom is still bent at the stomach, hands clutching herself where the snowball had hit.

 

Worry overtakes fear. “Mom? Mom!” He hurries across the lawn back to her with increasing concern. “Mom, are you ok–” Mom straightens in an instant, scooping up a pile snow from the ground in a fluid movement and dropping it over his head. “Mom!” he shrieks, and he’s shivering and laughing and Mom is almost smiling, it’s almost okay, even without Emma around.

 

Mom fusses over him as he gasps and shakes his head wildly, and she sends him upstairs for a warm bath even though he’s going to trail water through the house. It takes a full ten minutes in the bath before he remembers that Mom is a liar and also maybe the Evil Queen, and his good mood has faded by the time he comes back downstairs for dinner. 

 

Mom turns around, her eyes still bright, and something in Henry wilts as Mom takes in his expression and the lightness fades away. “It’s late,” Mom says. “I’d better check in with the office.” 

 

She vanishes into her study and leaves Henry alone at the table, picking at his meat loaf and wondering what his real mom is doing right now.

  
  


_Mom doesn’t love me , a list by Henry Daniel Mills: _

  1. _If she’s the Evil Queen, then she can’t love anyone._
  2. _She doesn’t smile around me anymore. (Only the fake smile. I hate the fake smile.)_
  3. _She lied._



 

She lied, and he stares at the list he’s written during recess, stares at the  _ Mom doesn’t love me _ across the top of the page in bold letters, and he rips out the paper and stuffs it into his pocket. He doesn’t want to think about this. 

 

He lets his eyes drift across the room instead, playing his new favorite game. Some of the teachers are really easy to pin down, like Miss Blanchard and the gym teacher who’s definitely the knight Frederick, who’d been turned to gold. The other kids are much harder to figure out. There aren’t many kids in fairytales, and he can figure out that Paige is the Mad Hatter’s daughter and Nick is Hansel from Hansel and Gretel, but he’s stumped when it comes to almost everyone else. He supposes that some people just have to be ordinary villagers whom the Evil Queen had terrorized.

 

If the book is real and all these kids remember it someday, then they’re all going to hate Mom– and him, too, for being Mom’s kid. And he isn’t even, really. It’s not fair. 

 

He starts a new list:  _ Mom isn’t my real mom _ and taps his pencil against the side of his notebook as he thinks about it. There are some things that aren’t really  _ things _ , that can’t be made into a neat list and organized to complement the title. It’s just little feelings, the way Mom does some things that leave Henry alone and unlov–

 

He’s almost relieved when there’s a shadow over him and he sees one of the older kids staring down at him. “You’re Henry Mills, right?” 

 

He shakes his head, knowing what’s coming next. “Nah, he just went inside, I bet if you went to the gym you’d see him–”

 

The kid yanks his notebook out of his hands. “Mom isn’t my real mom,” he reads, snorting as he shows it to his buddies. “Yeah, I bet I’d wish the same if I had a mom who looked like that.” He gives Henry a friendly little shove that isn’t friendly at all, and Henry presses his fingernails into his palm. “Heard you ran off to Boston and then cried like a baby and called your mommy to come get you. She didn’t even come for you.” He laughs. “She does seem like she’d be an ice queen at home.” 

 

Henry clenches his fists, kneads them into his knees to keep from doing anything too dumb. The older kid is about twice his size, and his friends are even bigger than he is. He can outlast them, sit here and refuse to respond and stay out of trouble. He just has to let their words roll over him.

 

The kid says, “I don’t know how she ever managed to get elected when everyone hates her. Even her own kid hates her.” He cuffs Henry’s shoulder again. “Maybe it was those legs,” he says thoughtfully, and Henry chews hard on his lip, his knuckles pressing hard against his skin. “I’d vote for those legs–” 

 

“Wrapped around you,” one of the other guys snorts, and the third guy says, “Isn’t that how the sheriff got her job?” and they all laugh together. 

 

“Come on, Henry,” the first guy says, and the shove is harder now. Henry feels on the edge of a precipice, desperate and frustrated and he doesn’t  _ care _ , let them  _ hate  _ Mom, let them– “Tell us the truth. How’d a bitch like your mom–?” 

 

Henry’s shaking fists are flashing out before he can control himself. He sees red, burns with fury that flames hot and turns to ashes as the guys finally get what they’d been after and pounce on him. He barely notices, blindly hitting at the first guy over and over again, and it’s only a familiar voice cutting into his rage that can pull him out of it. “Henry. Henry!” Emma says, yanking him back. Miss Blanchard is hovering behind her, wringing her hands. “What did you do?” Emma breathes, and Henry looks down for the first time since he’d jumped on the guy and sees that his nose is bleeding and he has a black eye. 

 

Henry’s pretty sure that he must look just as bad, and he doesn’t protest as Miss Blanchard marches him toward the principal’s office, Emma trailing behind her. “I’d better get back to work,” Emma says when he’s seated outside the office. She kneels down beside him, her fingers stroking a spot that feels tender when it’s touched. “Don’t tell your mom, but you looked pretty badass out there,” she whispers.

 

Henry smiles. 

 

It’s the last time he smiles that day, after his mother tears into the office full of righteous fury, after she sees his face and freezes, her expression stricken, after she endures the principal’s retelling of the fight with a stiff, strained face and her lips pursed together. “The boys exchanged words,” the principal says. “I’m sure Henry can give you the details. He threw the first punch.” 

 

And  _ that  _ settles exactly how deeply in trouble he is, after Mom puts a hand on the shoulder where the guy had cuffed him and drags him out of the school for a one-day suspension. It  _ hurts _ , but Henry doesn’t dare complain, and he blinks back tears and keeps his head high as he gets into the car with her. 

 

A part of him wants Mom to demand to know what was so unforgivable that he had had to pick a fight, even though he knows he’d never answer. A part of him just wants her to  _ try _ , to pretend that she cares at  _ all _ , but he knows with even more certainty that she won’t do that.

 

When they get home, Mom puts her hand on his arm this time– maybe she had seen him flinch when she’d squeezed his shoulder after all– and guides him upstairs to her bathroom. She fishes out the first aid kit and takes out an old step stool with  _ HENRY  _ carved into it in big wooden letters, and she crouches down on it as she wipes at his cheek where it had hit the ground and scraped, at his rapidly swelling nose, at the cuts on his knees and face that he hadn’t noticed when he’d been too focused on fighting back.

 

Mom is gentle, gentler than he’d have thought she was capable of anymore. For a moment, it feels like the old days again, like every time he’d come crying to her with a skinned knee and she’d pressed a kiss to it before settling him down in her bathroom. For a moment, and then she’s stepping back and saying in an even tone, “Your clothes are filthy. Let me get you something to change into.” 

 

“Mom–” Henry says, and he doesn’t know what he’s going to say, if it’ll be a confession or a thank you or a beseeching  _ why _ , why can he still want to hurt another kid for saying what Henry’s been thinking for months. Why does he still burn thinking about  _ even her own kid hates her  _ and why can’t he admit to her why he’d done it.

 

But Henry’s courage has only lasted him so far, and it falters in the face of his mother’s patience. “Okay,” he mutters, tugging off his jeans and his shirt, and Mom brings him new clothes as she absentmindedly turns out his pockets before she drops his clothes into the hamper. 

 

“Wait–” Henry starts, but Mom is already picking up the crumpled paper from the floor and uncrumpling it, reading the words on the page.  _ Mom doesn’t love me _ _ , a list by Henry Daniel Mills _ . “That’s not–” 

 

Mom reads it and stands in silence, teetering a bit from side to side, and then she turns on her heel and leaves the bathroom. Her shoulders are shaking, her hands squeezing the paper into a tight little ball, and Henry can’t find the words to explain any of it away. He doesn’t know if he wants to, and he feels very small.

 

Mom’s study door is locked when he tries it, twisting the doorknob and then fleeing instead of knocking or speaking, and she doesn’t come out to see him again until dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> he's ten!! it's rough. he'll get there, and so will she.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot last chapter to thank Megan for all her help with Chapter 1! Thank you, thank you, thank you! And thank you to all of you for your feedback, you make my days so much brighter. <3 I know it's really frustrating to see Henry at this age, like this, but he's on the verge of a revelation!! Soon!

_ Punching that guy wasn’t about Mom,  _ _a list by Henry Daniel Mills:_

  1. _Lots of guys bug me about Mom and I’ve never punched them (though they never got that nasty before)._
  2. _Mom isn’t my real mom and I don’t CARE so why would I care now._
  3. _Mom didn’t even ask me about it so why does it matter, anyway._



 

 

He stops the list at once, out of reasons to prove his point. He’s started way too many pages lately without finishing them. He likes things neat and clear and honest, the facts laid out before him. _Fact: Emma likes Mom when no one else does. Fact: Mom stays at work longer when he’s mad at her. Fact: Mom is a liar._ They pile up to be sorted, and he likes pushing together pieces until they make sense, until the world makes sense. _Fact: Mom saw the list he’d meant to throw out. Fact: Mom hadn’t talked about it since. Fact: Mom is taking him to Dr. Hopper today instead. List title: Mom has given up on them ever being okay again._

 

He sees Emma exit the station as they walk toward it. She must have seen them coming up the street, and Henry exhales in relief. Emma is a welcome break from the stifling silence that has come with his suspension. Mom is pretending that she hasn’t seen the paper now. She’d pretended at dinner, too, a rictus smile on her face that had been even worse than the usual false one, and they’d sat in uncomfortable silence. Henry had pretended, too, avoided looking at Mom’s red eyes or his own black one, and he’d escaped to his room as quickly as he could.

 

She’d awakened him on time this morning and said quickly, “I made an appointment for you with Dr. Hopper,” and Henry had shrugged and stared out the window instead of responding. He wonders sometimes if his birth mother is still out there thinking about him, if she’s looking up at the same sky right now and wishing she’d never lost him. The crescent moon is still out, silver against pale blue, and Henry watches it until it disappears behind a cloud.

 

He doesn’t want to go to this appointment, and Mom seems to know it because they’d eaten at Granny’s even though he’d gotten suspended from school the day before. She’d even let him have dessert, and he thinks he would be bouncing from the sugar in anyone else’s presence.

 

In Mom’s, he walks beside her, fingers tapping against his side in unspoken anxiety, and he can barely muster up a smile for Emma. “Hey, kid,” Emma says. Her fingers are tapping, too. Maybe he’d picked up the habit from her. “Hey, Regina. Take Your Kid To Work Day?”

 

Mom rolls her eyes. “I know you know what happened,” she says. “The principal told me that you pulled Henry off of that boy.”

 

Emma shrugs, reaching out to muss Henry’s hair. “You would have been proud. I’ve never seen a kid fight back so hard while being thoroughly beaten up.”

 

Mom’s lips twitch, her eyes going distant. “I have,” she says, and Henry watches her in confusion at the almost-amusement in her voice. “And it was incredibly stupid then, just as it was now.”

 

Henry finally ventures, “Who–”

 

A smile plays at Mom’s lips. “A _vagrant_ the nunnery had taken in when I was an aide here. Mother had taken a personal interest in her case–”

 

“–Because it was an election year,” Emma says, smirking. For the first time in a long time, both his Mom and Emma are smiling at each other, caught in memories of a time before Henry.

 

Mom snorts in agreement. “For all the good that did Mother.” Henry doesn’t remember his grandmother. She’d been pushed from her office by corruption charges, and she’d left town soon after. Mom had taken over until the next election, at which point no one in town would have ever considered voting for anyone else.

 

Emma leans back against a lamppost, tucking her thumbs into her belt. “Admit it, you were pretty into me getting into all those fights. Everyone loves a bad girl.” She wiggles her eyebrows at Mom. Henry looks between them, suddenly certain he has to make a new list.

 

But he can’t do anything while they’re _here_. “That may be so,” Mom says dryly, “But I don’t think you qualified. You were just a hopeless idiot with no impulse control.”

 

“I was a badass!” Emma says, outraged. “And a charming one, too. You were _taken_ with me.”

 

Mom rolls her eyes. Henry’s heard so little about this time– about Mom being a kid, really, and Emma coming to town– that he hadn’t even known that they’d known each other before Emma had become sheriff. This is new. “I was ordered to look after you,” Mom corrects her. “Mother had already attached herself to you when she’d cleared your name, and she was very concerned that you would besmirch her name instead. I was not _taken_.”

 

Emma does an imitation of Mom’s voice, deep and throaty and surprisingly distinctive. “‘Miss Swan, couldn’t you try to win at least _some_ of these fights? Not that I don’t absolutely love playing nurse with you, but you’re way sexier without the swollen nose–”

 

Henry’s laughing, startled and wondering if Mom could really have been like _that_ , and Mom says, her eyes sparkling as her tone is sarcastic, “I think I might prefer the swollen nose, if you’d just come a little closer–”

 

Emma leans over to Henry, speaking in a stage whisper, “She’ll never admit it, but your mom once punched a guy for me.”

 

“Outrageous,” Mom says at once. Emma quirks an eyebrow and Mom concedes, “It wasn’t _for_ you. He was being obscene, and I knew you’d get into a fight you couldn’t handle if I didn’t do something.”

 

“Emma couldn’t handle a fight?” Henry says dubiously.

 

It’s weird, how quickly the mood changes. Mom and Emma are exchanging silent glances, and Emma says lightly, “Well, I still had a bloody lip from the last one.” It sounds like a lie, and Henry’s brow furrows as he looks between them.

 

“Henry spends much too much time with you,” Mom says finally. “Did you know he threw the first punch?”

 

“Nice,” Emma turns to high-five him. Mom glares, and Emma’s hand swooping back down to her lap before it can hit his. “I bet the other kid had it coming. What’d he say, anyway?”

 

Henry shrugs. “Nothing,” he mutters, chewing on his lip. “It was nothing.” Mom is watching him, her eyes sharp, and he turns to meet her eyes for the first time since she’d found the list.

 

She’s the first to look away. “We’d better get going,” she says. “You’re going to be late.”

 

“Where are you headed?” Emma asks curiously.

 

Mom’s face gets tight again. “That’s none of your concern,” she says.

 

And it’s not _fair_ , that they could be happy and look at each other so contentedly while talking about a world without him while they’re tense and uncomfortable in the one that he’s in. He can’t stand the hostility anymore, and he doesn’t want to _go_ , and maybe Emma will understand– “Mom’s making me go to Dr. Hopper,” he says boldly, and Mom’s eyes narrow as Emma’s widen.

 

“You’re sending him to the _shrink_?” she says disbelievingly. “That’s how you’re dealing with this?” She looks to Henry, then back to Mom, and she’s tugging Mom away from Henry toward the yard outside the station. Their voices are still loud, hushed whispers giving way to snarls, and Henry sits on a bench and stares at his notebook while he listens. “The kid doesn’t need therapy. He just needs to talk–”

 

“He doesn’t want to talk!” Mom snaps.

 

“He wants to understand!” Emma says desperately. “He’s grappling with what it means that you have him, that his birth mother didn't– didn't keep him…I know better than _anyone_ how that feels–”

 

“Yes,” Mom says coldly. “You know better than anyone about all of Henry’s questions.”

 

Emma flinches back as though Mom had struck her. It’s cruel, really, to bring up Emma’s childhood like this, and Henry makes a list: _Emma’s the only one who can understand me_ and then gives it up, too distracted by the fight happening a dozen feet away.

 

Emma’s face is stiff and white. “Regina,” she says, and she sounds hurt.

 

Mom isn’t fazed. “You don’t get to condescend to me about what’s best for Henry,” she bites out. “What, have you deemed me an unworthy mother?”

 

Emma shakes her head. “I’m not–”

 

Mom continues, cold as ice. “Am I not good enough? You don’t think I know that?” Henry’s head jerks up at that, watching Mom stand so stiffly that he thinks one blow would crack her in half.

 

And Mom– the Evil Queen would lash out now, but Emma doesn’t. “I’m just trying to help,” she says dully.

 

“You’re just trying. You’re trying to fix us!” Mom snarls. Her voice turns mocking. “You want to…swoop in on _goddamned_ white horse and save us from ourselves, don’t you? Isn’t that the Emma Swan way?” She clenches her hands into fists. “We don’t need you. We don’t want you,” she says, her voice even.

 

And Emma, who bends and bends like a sprout and bounces right back up when the storm is done, Emma who never takes Mom seriously when she’s being mean…Emma nods curtly and returns to the station, her shoulders hunched as she trudges to the door.

 

Mom twists around, stalks to Henry’s bench, seizes his hand. “We’re going,” she says sharply, and they continue down the street without once looking at each other.

 

* * *

 

 _ What I know about my real mom,  _ _a list by Henry Daniel Mills:_

  1. _She didn’t want me._



 

 

When he goes back to school, he wears his black eye like a badge of honor. Nick thinks that it looks cool, and the other kids talk about him in hushed tones. It’s the way they talk about Mom sometimes, and Henry holds his head high and thinks that maybe he’s been changed by the Evil Queen raising him. Maybe his birth mom was a hero, and he’s been corrupted into a bad guy.

 

He thinks about his birth mom a lot since the aborted attempt to speak with the agency who’d arranged the adoption. If he can’t go through them, his only chance is through Mom. If it hadn’t been a closed adoption.

 

And he can’t talk to Mom about this. He can’t even ask her what kind of adoption it had been, let alone if she’d let him meet his birth mom. Mom’s the villain of this story, and sometimes he likes to imagine that she’d stolen him away from the heroes, that he’s her revenge, that that’s the only reason why she’d have wanted him.

 

Maybe his real mom was a fairytale hero, a savior that his book doesn’t talk about. Maybe she’s still dreaming about seeing him someday, and he looks at the sky again, tracks the moon where it’s still waxing and thinks about both of them looking at the same moon.

 

But when he looks outside, all he sees is Emma leaning against the fence in the playground and talking to the security guard. She notices him after a few minutes and throws him a wink that looks a little wan, and he watches her silently and turns back to his classroom.

 

His real mom is out there somewhere, and he’s sure that if he could only _meet_ her– if he could talk to her and get to know her– she would want him back. Mom would be mad at first but he’s pretty sure that she wouldn’t care too much if he disappeared. She hadn’t even gone after him when he’d been lost in Boston.

 

Next time, he won’t come crying home.

 

Dr. Hopper (“Please, call me Archie.”) had given him homework, even though he’d only talked about school and the suspension and some of the bullying that happens. He’d avoided talking about his mom and his birth mom and he’d talked about Emma instead, about when other kids had started calling him Mayor Dorkwad in second grade and he hadn’t told anyone about it. But someone must have told Emma, because she’d come in to pick him up from school the next day in the sheriff uniform that she never wears, and she’d lifted him into the air and called him her best deputy and no one had called him Mayor Dorkwad again.

 

Archie had listened carefully to the story and then said, “I want you to think about how that made you feel about your mother,” and when Henry had refused to tell him, he’d given Henry a list of words and told him to circle the ones that applied and bring it back next week. Henry circles _angry_ , then pauses, unsure about the rest.

 

He goes back the next week with just that, and Archie says, “Why angry?”

 

Henry doesn’t know, but somehow instead he finds himself saying, “I think they’re all going to hate me even more when they find out about my mother.”

 

“What will they find out about your mother?”

 

Henry stares at his notebook, his eyes tracing the constellation he’d drawn into the cover. “That she’s the Evil Queen,” he says, and Archie leans forward and listens as he tells him the story that Miss Blanchard’s book had revealed. “Everyone in this town is a fairytale character,” he says. “You’re Jiminy Cricket. Ruby from the diner is Little Red Riding Hood. And my mom cursed them all.”

 

“And who are you?”

 

“I’m not from here. I’m not a fairytale. Neither is Emma.” He doesn’t know why he always adds that, why it’s so important that everyone knows that he and Emma are the same. “My mom is the bad guy. I bet she took out her own heart so she couldn’t love anything, just like my Grandma Cora.”

 

“Has your mother ever done anything to make you feel as though she can’t love?” Archie asks. Mom must have told him about the list. He wonders what she’d done with it. Burn it, probably. The Evil Queen burns lots of stuff in the book.

 

Henry tries to remember the items on the list and draws a blank. All he can come up with is, “She lied,” and Archie nods gravely and asks him more questions about the curse. “It has to be broken,” he says. “And I don’t know who’s going to do it. It would have to be someone really special. Someone who could face my mom and _win_.” He bites his lip, thinking about Mr. Gold for a moment and shuddering. Mr. Gold is definitely not a hero. “Maybe my real mother, when she comes to get me back from Mom.”

 

Archie’s eyes flick down to the paper he’s writing on and then back up to Henry. “You think your birth mother is a part of this curse?”

 

“Why else would Mom have wanted me?” Henry says, and Archie doesn’t answer for a silent minute before he says, “Our time is up,” and gives him homework for next week.

 

* * *

 

 _ Emma is going to break the curse,  _ _a list by Henry Daniel Mills:_

  1. _She’s pretty badass sometimes when she isn’t being a dork._
  2. _She isn’t in the stories (just like me)._
  3. _She’s the only one who isn’t afraid of Mom (even if she won’t talk to her anymore)._
  4. _Mom looks at her sometimes now like she’s afraid of her._



 

 

Mom hasn’t talked to Emma at all since they’d fought last week, and Henry knows it’s probably for the best, if they’re really going to be on either side of the final battle. But he still twinges at the thought of it, when Emma’s so cranky and Mom just seems sad. They haven’t gone to Granny’s in a while, and Mom takes him to the bus every morning and calls home right after school, as though to make sure that he hasn’t run away again.

 

Maybe she just doesn’t want him around Emma. Emma says as much when he goes to the station instead of the house one day after school. Her eyes light up and then dim at the sight of him, and she says, “Henry, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here.”

 

“It’s okay,” he says conspiratorially. “I _know_.”

 

There’s a distinctly trapped look in Emma’s eyes, a dawning horror that only encourages Henry. “You-you know?”

 

“I know about the final battle,” he says, and a light seems to fade from Emma’s eyes. “I know you’re probably worried about whose side I’ll be on because the Evil Queen is my mom, but I’m with–”

 

“The _Evil Queen_ ?” Emma repeats, her voice rising. Henry takes a step back, and Emma calms herself. “Sorry. I’m…you’d better make sure your mom never hears you call her _that_ ,” she says shakily, taking a step toward him.

 

Henry bobs his head. “Your secret is safe with me,” he says. Maybe Emma doesn’t realize yet that she’s supposed to be fighting Mom. Maybe he’s miscalculated and it _is_ his birth mother he should be waiting for. Or maybe Emma’s just worried he’ll be in danger if Mom knows that he knows.

 

Emma closes her eyes. “You’re getting worse,” she mutters, and Henry has to strain to hear her. “This is– Archie was a bad idea. Your mom isn’t _evil_ , Henry. She’s scared.”

 

Does Emma know? He can’t tell anymore. “Scared the curse is going to be broken, I _know_ ,” he says impatiently. “She’s afraid of you.”

 

“She’s afraid of _you_ ,” Emma counters. Her voice is low and pleading, and Henry doesn’t understand. How could his mom possibly be afraid of him? He isn’t a superhero or a savior. “She’s afraid you’re going to hurt her. And calling her _evil_ – creating this…this fantasy where she’s the bad guy– Henry, _please_. She’s given you everything. Don’t do this to her.” She scrubs at her face with her palm and Henry is angry, is confused, is hurt.

 

“I can’t hurt her,” he shoots back. “You talk about her like…like she _cares_ , but she doesn’t! I’m not her real son. I’m another problem she can ignore and– and send to Archie and fight with you over– and–”

 

Emma’s shaking her head vigorously, and her eyes are getting darker and darker. “I would have _killed_ for a mom like her, Henry. I know she isn’t perfect and you’ve been going through this rough spot, but she loves you so much, kid, _god_ –” She’s blinking rapidly, and Henry’s suddenly afraid she might cry. “If you two would just stop being so _stubborn_ –”

 

“What the hell is this?” Heart sinking, Henry turns to face his livid mother. She’s standing in the doorway of the station and she isn’t looking at him. She’s glaring at Emma, and Henry knows at once that she hasn’t heard any of what Emma’s been saying. “So you’ve gone from deciding what’s best for Henry to interfering with his schedule? How very presumptuous.”

 

Henry had never seen Mom snap at Emma before Boston. They’d made their friendly jibes, had teased each other but never gone too far. Emma is always so _good_ at calming Mom, at finding the right words to make the fight fade from her eyes, and even when they’ve been angry at each other, they’ve never looked like this. Mom’s eyes have never burned with so much anger and fear that it might be hatred instead, and Emma has never looked so small. “Regina,” she says in a murmur. “I was just sending him home. I’m not trying to– to–”

 

“I know enough about what you’re trying to do,” Mom says. It’s weird, really, because the fury in her voice is so _hard_ , it’s cutting and it feels as brittle as it does when she’s angry with him. Emma must be wrong about Mom, about her being afraid that Henry’s going to hurt her, but her eyes flicker with the same kind of fear toward Emma, too. “If you could refrain for just one day from– from…” Her voice cracks and Emma’s eyes are hollow and longing and sad, and Mom turns away. “Henry, come with me,” she orders.

 

“Regina,” Emma whispers, but Mom doesn’t respond, her back to Emma and her spine ramrod-straight. Henry throws one desperate glance back at Emma, but Emma won’t look at him, and he bites his lip and follows Mom, torn into two.

 

Mom doesn’t talk to him as they walk back to her office. He’s shuffling, his backpack weighing down on him, and she pauses and takes it from him without a word. Her eyes look bloodshot, like she hasn’t been sleeping well, and Henry wonders if the curse is close to breaking or if it’s something else. He doesn’t like seeing Mom like this, like she’s on the verge of something awful, whether or not she is an Evil Queen.

 

“I’ll call in dinner,” Mom says finally. “You will sit and do your homework on the couch. I don’t want you seeing Emma anymore.”

 

“Mom!” he says, aghast. Emma’s, like, her only friend, and he doesn’t know how someone can care so little that she can just cut out Emma like that. “Emma was saying _good_ things about you,” he says quickly. “She’s the one who’s been trying to convince me that you aren’t the Evil Queen–”

 

It’s the wrong thing to say. Mom barks out, “That’s _enough_ , Henry,” and she picks up the phone before he can respond, spinning her chair so she’s facing the window and he can’t see her expression.

 

He isn’t done, he _isn’t_ , because he doesn’t want to lose Emma and he doesn’t want Mom to, either. They stay at Mom’s office until it’s nearly his bedtime, until the building is empty and even the cleaning staff has left, and the moment they step out into the hallway and toward the stairwell, he tries again. “Emma hasn’t done anything wrong! I was the one who went there. I won’t again, I swear, if you–”

 

“I’m really tired of hearing about Emma Swan,” Mom bursts out, and it sounds choked. It sounds like she actually does care, and Henry stops to stare at her in astonishment as she yanks open the door to the ground floor–

 

–and a wave of fire slams into them with a crash, thunderous and terrifying. “ _MOM!_ ” Henry screams, tumbling backward onto the stairs. His knapsack is the only thing to save him from hurting his back, but even through it, he can feel blinding pain. He sees stars, then a piece of the banister detaches from the force of the sudden fire and slams toward him.

 

Mom is shouting his name, but Henry can’t move, can’t think. He’s frozen in place, nothing but glittering orange destruction to see, and Mom hurls herself in front of him just in time, her hands swinging out helplessly to stop the heavy metal piece from smashing into him. She cries out, and Henry finally snaps back to reality.

 

Mom is sprawled out on the stairs in front of him, the heavy railing trapping her foot, and she gasps out, “Run, Henry. Run upstairs. The fire department will be here soon– the window–” The walls are freshly painted and covered in sheets that have flames licking at them already, rising through the stairwell. “I can’t move, Henry, you have to _go_.” Tears are slipping down her cheeks from the pain, and Henry can only gape at them, can only reach out to touch her face and the wetness that streaks down it.

 

Mom hasn’t cried in _five years_ , he thinks inanely, and he can’t quite focus on what’s happening around them. He’s terrified, rooted to the spot, and Mom pushes him away from her, says urgently, “Henry, snap out of it. _Henry!_ ” She reaches helplessly for the steps beside him, digs her fingers into the edging and uses it to pull herself upward, curses flying from her mouth that Henry’s never even _heard_ before.

 

He jerks back to reality again, fading in and out, and Mom slides an arm around him and hoists him upward, the flames moving faster than they do. Mom is chanting his name in a low voice, comforting and unceasing. “Stay with me, Henry, Henry, you’re going to be all right, Henry, you’re in shock– _dammit_ –”

 

That last bit is as they finally make it up the stairs and find that the fire’s beaten them to it. Henry lets out a little moan at the sight of Mom’s office door in flames, and Mom tries to stand but her ankle twists beneath her. “Henry,” she says, tugging him down beneath the thick clouds of smoke. “Henry, listen to me.” Her hands are pressed against his cheeks, her eyes dark and focused, and Henry blinks and stares at her, struggling to return to normal.

 

“I need you to make a list. You can do a list, right?” Mom’s voice is gently coaxing, twisted with pain, and Henry nods, shaking. _The building is on fire and we have to get out_ gets all mixed up with _Mom threw herself in front of me_ and _Mom is saving my life_ and he’s listing facts in his head, one after another as Mom grips him and stares fiercely into his eyes. “Do you hear the sirens?” she says. “They’re coming for us. You need to climb out the window onto the overhang.” She coughs. “If they don’t get here in time, jump. I can’t do anything with this damned ankle–”

 

Henry doesn’t understand again, not this, not from Mom, who barely ever even looks him in the eye, and he stares at her and manages, coughing through the smoke, “I thought– I thought you didn’t–”

 

Mom reaches over to him, her bad leg splayed out behind them, and she pulls him to her. “Go, my little prince,” she murmurs, and she presses her lips to his forehead.

 

She hasn’t called him that since the Lie, hasn’t looked at him like this in so many months. Her coldness has melted in the warmth of fire, and she looks like his _mom_ again and he’s crying. “Go!” she gasps out, and she pushes him hard toward the one window in the hall that the fire hasn’t reached.

 

He makes a mad dash for it, turning back again and again to watch Mom. She’s slumped to the ground now, her eyes closing as though she’s given up, and he lets out a sob and yanks the window open, scrabbling at the screen until it’s unlatched and falls to the ground below. There are fire trucks in front, sirens squealing, and he shouts himself hoarse until they finally look up and spot him.

 

Emma’s patrol car is parked behind the fire engines, but Emma is nowhere to be seen.

 

* * *

 

 _ There’s no curse on Storybrooke,  _ _a list by Henry Daniel Mills:_

  1. _If Mom were the Evil Queen, she would have been able to escape the fire._
  2. _And she wouldn’t have gotten hurt saving me._
  3. _It was all dumb kid stuff, anyway._



 

 

His bed is right next to Mom’s. He’s only at the hospital for what Dr. Whale says is _observation_ but mostly just seems to mean that he gets woken up every hour with a new nurse asking him questions and taking his temperature. He wants to pad across the floor and climb into Mom’s bed, to curl against her and listen to the steady beat of her heart, but there’s someone in the way.

 

Emma is draped over the side of Mom’s bed now, seated in a chair and her head resting on the mattress. She’d been on his bed the last time he’d awakened. She’s supposed to be under observation, too, but she’d refused to be admitted. (“I was barely inside,” she’d snapped at the paramedics when they’d dragged her out of the building and given her oxygen. “I’m fine, I don’t need– would you please just focus on _them_ –”)

 

Emma had also gotten a lengthy lecture on fire safety and why you don’t run into a burning building, but she’d been the one to burst up the stairs and carry Mom to the window right as the floor by the stairwell had caved in. The firefighters wouldn’t have gotten there in time, and Emma might be stupid but she’d saved Mom’s life, _so_.

 

Henry watches her as she stirs, sees Emma straighten out and stroke Mom’s brow. Mom shifts for the first time since they’d gotten out of the building, her eyes opening slowly. “Henry?” she says hoarsely.

 

Emma gestures toward him, and Henry shuts his eyes quickly as Mom’s bed creaks. “Sleeping. He’s been fine. You got him out of there right in time.”

 

“How did– how am I–?” Mom coughs, and Henry opens one eye cautiously. Emma is pouring Mom water on her tray, passing it to her.

 

“They got you out, too,” she says, and she takes in a shuddering breath. “When I heard the 911 call at Town Hall, I thought I’d lost you. Both of you.”

 

Mom laughs, raspy and affectionate. “You’ll have to try harder than that to get rid of me.”

 

Emma lets out a sob, and Mom reaches over to her, pulls Emma’s head into the crook of her arm to kiss the top of her head. “Do they know how the fire started?”

 

“I don’t think– I was never trying to tell you how to parent Henry,” Emma says, gulping back another sob. “And of _course_ you’re good enough to be his mother. You’re the only one I ever–” She takes in a breath, two weeks of anger gone in the quiet of the hospital room. “I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like you weren’t doing enough. You’re fucking amazing, Regina, you know that?”

 

Mom doesn’t answer at first, pulling Emma closer instead, and it’s only when her ankle hits the side of the tray and she lets out a hiss that Emma draws away. “Wait,” Mom says, her voice still rough and hoarse. “Emma…” She doesn’t apologize, not like Emma had, but she clasps her hands on Emma’s cheeks like she had Henry earlier, and Emma nods shakily. Mom isn’t always good at words, Henry’s beginning to realize.

 

They sit like that for a few quiet minutes before Mom whispers Emma’s name again and Emma somehow knows immediately what she’s asking. She turns, moving back to Henry, and Henry makes his breathing even and shuts his eyes again.

 

He’s lifted silently by strong arms, carried across the room, and when he’s set down beside Mom, he stops pretending to be asleep. Mom’s eyes are open, clear, and she says in a choked voice, “I brought you to my office. I was the reason you nearly…”

 

Henry wants to burrow into her, to block out the memories of everything after the Lie and to be held by his mother when he’s scared and shaken. Instead, he meets her eyes and waits, fat tears threatening to fall from the corners of his eyes. Mom touches his cheeks, his chin, his trembling arms, as though to reassure herself that he’s real. “I know I haven’t been the best mother lately,” she whispers. Emma makes a strangled sound as though to stop her. “I’m going to try, all right? I’m going to try.”

  
_Try_ , Henry thinks, and he wonders if he might be ready to try, too, to be better with her. “I love you,” Mom murmurs, and Henry’s tears finally fall. Mom holds him tight and Emma rubs his back and Henry cries and cries and cries until he can’t make lists or think of facts or do anything but drift off in his mother’s arms.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a bit of free time to finish up the epilogue, so I figured I might as well post it now. Thank you all for reading! This story is very dear to my heart but I know that it isn't necessarily the kind of story that appeals to everyone, and I'm so grateful to all y'all who gave it a chance. <3

_Emma Swan is in love with Mom_ _, a list by Henry Daniel Mills:_

  1. _She ran into a burning building to save her, which was really stupid but more understandable now, I guess._
  2. _She puts up with Mom even when Mom threatens to shove her out the window during physical therapy for her ankle._
  3. _The way she looks at Mom when Mom isn’t looking at her. (Like she’d probably run into a hundred more fires if it meant Mom would be safe.)_
  4. _The way she looks at Mom when Mom IS looking at her. (Like she’d probably run into a hundred more fires if it meant Mom might kiss her.)_
  5. _Ew._



 

Emma is staying with them while Mom recovers. Mom had tried protesting that one but Emma had been stubborn and Henry had stayed out of it, instinctively certain that if he says anything it’ll do the opposite of what he wants. So Mom hobbles around the house, making waspish comments to Emma whenever she tries helping her down the stairs. She’s snippy and cranky but Emma keeps her on edge enough that she doesn’t have time to go distant and hard again.

 

Mom is still working a lot but she comes out of her study every afternoon when Henry gets home from school, crouches down opposite him and asks him about his day, and it’s stilted and awkward but Henry tries, too. He still doesn’t understand how Mom could have jumped between him and a fire without a second thought, but sometimes they’re talking and Mom manages a real smile and he feels like the answer might be pretty close.

 

He doesn’t think about the curse anymore. The curse was a dumb idea, because Mom is kind of a hero now and she can’t be an _evil_ hero. “It’s better now,” he tells Archie. “Everything is softer.”

 

 _Mom_ is softer. She wears pajamas to breakfast one morning and lets Emma do the cooking, watches movies with Henry and he finally feels her move, stiffly, as though she has to reposition all her limbs to learn how to wrap her arm around his shoulders. It only takes a few days before her ankle is well enough to walk on, but Emma doesn’t stop coming around. “Admit it,” she says one night. Henry is in his room, pretending to read with the door cracked open so he can hear the conversation in Mom’s bedroom. “You like having me around.”

 

Mom sighs heavily. “I have never willingly invited you into my home,” she retorts.

 

“False. False!” Emma says smugly. “You’ve invited me to every single one of Henry’s birthdays. And I spent the first month after…you know…” Her voice trails off, suddenly solemn.

 

Mom pauses and says, “Well, you didn’t have to _come_ ,” so haughtily that Henry thinks that they might be fighting.

 

But Emma laughs and says, “As if I’d miss it.” Her voice softens. “You know, I didn’t think…I didn’t think you’d ever let me into the house again after Henry was born.”

 

“Neither did I,” Mom murmurs. There’s a pause in the conversation, some shuffling and creaking of the bed that could be anything, and then Mom says, so low that Henry has to strain to hear, “But I do trust you.”

 

Emma freezes. Henry can hear the sudden non-movement, and it’s Emma who’s always in motion, who’s probably wandering around the room while Mom sits on the bed. “Are you sure?” Her voice sounds strangled, uncertain.

 

Mom barks out a laugh. “I’m never going to be sure,” she says. Her voice softens. “But I want to be.”

 

“Okay,” Emma breathes, and Henry hears the creak of the floor and a thump. He steals off his bed and creeps across the room, and when he peeks out into the hallway, he can see his mom and Emma both in Mom’s bedroom. Mom is sitting on the bed, just like he’d thought, her feet dangling off it and the tips of her toes brushing against the floor. But the thump had been Emma, dropping to her knees in front of Mom, and now she kneels in front of her with her hands in Mom’s.

 

If he still believed in the curse, he would have thought that Emma was a knight, swearing fealty to her queen. But Mom isn’t an evil queen and Emma is looking up at her, eyes bright, and they’re both smiling at each other with glowing eyes.

 

Henry closes his door very quietly and heads to his bookcase. Miss Blanchard’s book of fairytales is sitting on top of it, and he slides that into place with the other, ordinary books, and finds a photo album.

 

It’s only half full. He’d put it together with Mom when he’d been a kid, complete with stickers and glitter on the best pages, but he hasn’t decorated pages in years. Still, every time they go on a trip or have an event of some sort, Mom prints a few more pictures for his album.

 

The photo album goes back so far that Henry had never even suspected that he’d been adopted, because there are pictures of him as an infant with a hospital blanket wrapped around him, pictures of Mom with him. She isn’t wearing a hospital gown in the pictures, which should have been his first clue, he guesses.

 

There are pictures of Mom with him when he’s still red-faced and tiny, and for the first time ever, Henry wonders who had snapped all these pictures.

 

He turns a few pages, past a chubby-faced baby who beams as brightly as Mom does, and there’s his first birthday. It’s at the dining room table, the whole room decked out with decorations, and there are a few kids there he doesn’t recognize. He’s sitting at the end of the table, a party hat planted on his head, and Mom is cutting the cake. And in the corner of the picture, barely visible, Emma leans against a wall and watches him.

 

She’s much younger. She’s wearing glasses and is more awkward, her limbs kind of spindly and hanging at her sides, and she isn’t smiling like everyone else.

 

She’s smiling in the next one, at his two-year-old birthday. The picture Mom had picked also has her in the edge of the photo, crouched on the lawn and retying a balloon to one of the chairs while everyone else gathers around Henry. She’s glancing over at them, watching Henry and Mom, and she’s smiling wistfully.

 

It takes until Henry’s fifth birthday before Emma makes it into the center of the photo. She’s standing next to Mom, grinning for the camera, and she has the sheriff star hanging from her belt. She’s with them in the rest of the birthday pictures, more comfortable and relaxed, until Henry’s ten-year-old birthday at Granny’s.

 

That had been after he’d found out about the Lie, and his smile is angry-eyed and hard and Mom’s is false. Everything about the picture feels wrong and pretend, like it’s a lot of people pretending to be happy, and Emma is only visible in the background of this picture, in a booth behind them instead of being in their booth, her face taut with tension.

 

* * *

 

_What I know about the day I was born_ _, a list by Henry Daniel Mills:_

  1. _I was born in Storybrooke General Hospital._
  2. _Mom adopted me right away._
  3. _It must have been a closed adoption._
  4. _Did the agency in Boston ever exist?_



 

It’s a new question, one he has no answers to. It seems as though whatever had gone on at his birth had been agreed upon by both his birth mom and Mom, and if there _had_ been an agency, it hadn’t done much of anything for them. Henry had been Mom’s from the start, but all he can think about now is…

 

  1. _My birth mother is in Storybrooke somewhere._



 

Mom is trying. Henry’s trying, too, and they dance on eggshells around each other and try their best to get along. Mom would _die_ for Henry, and he knows that it’s more than enough, and he’d be ungrateful to ask for anything more than that.

 

He wishes they’d _talk_ , that Mom would just answer his questions and let him see his birth mom. That Mom would stop pretending that his adoption is an inconvenient fiction and tell him the _truth_. But that hasn’t changed, even if they smile more and spend more time together. Henry still doesn’t understand why Mom didn’t even go to Boston to get him, and he…

 

He needs answers, and he’ll just have to find a way of getting them without Mom finding out. _She’s afraid you’re going to hurt her_ , Emma had said, and Henry still can’t quite believe it, can’t see Mom as so fragile when she’s always as strong and steady as a tree trunk, unyielding and unbroken. But he owes this to Mom, and so it’s Emma’s credit card he steals from her wallet during dinner the next day and slides into his pocket, returning to the dining room for dessert as it burns a hole into his side.

 

Once he’s upstairs, Emma and Mom doing dishes in the kitchen and oblivious to his absence, Henry shuts his door carefully and sits down at his computer to Google. He doesn’t use the last site he’d tried, the one that had only given him the agency name. _Whosyourmomma.org_ promises to give more detailed records of adoption, and he puts in Emma’s information and hesitates, biting his lip.

 

If his adoption is legal– and it must be, no matter which channels Mom had gone through, because Mom is the _mayor_ and a stickler for these things– then this is it. This website promises _immediate results for most applicants!_ , and all he has to do is punch in his information on the form and click _submit_.

 

His pointer hovers over the first box in the form. _First name_ . He’s named after his mother’s father, who has a mausoleum all to himself in the cemetery. Mom brings him there every year on the anniversary of his grandfather’s death, and they leave flowers and Henry tries telling him about his year, feeling very foolish. _Middle name._ His middle name is from someone Mom doesn’t like to talk about, a boy she’d known and lost when she’d been younger. _Last Name._ Mills, because once Mom’s family had worked in a mill. The family he’d been adopted into has scorched their mark in every part of him, until he’s undeniably theirs.

 

“I just want to _know_ ,” he says aloud, but his fingers still haven’t made it to the _H_ of _Henry_.

 

“You won’t,” Mom says from the doorway.

 

Henry jolts. Mom is standing very still, a hand against her abdomen, and her face is unnaturally pale. Behind her, Emma is whitefaced and silent. “None of this will make a difference,” Mom says coldly, her face like stone again. “Stealing a credit card? Planning to run again? None of those websites are going to find your birth mother. Nothing will change. _Nothing_.” She says it almost viciously, almost angrily, and Henry finds himself leaning forward and waiting urgently for that anger, long overdue.

 

He bites his lip when it isn’t forthcoming. “Mom–”

 

“Don’t _Mom_ me,” Mom says, and no, _no_ , her voice is rising but it isn’t anger and Henry can’t do this. “I thought we finally– I thought you were finally moving _past_ this–”

 

“I’m not going to move past this!” Now it’s Henry’s who’s angry, because how dare she. How _dare_ she. “Is that what you think? If we don’t talk about it, I might _forget_ that you’re not my real mom? I’ll just get over it?” Mom stares at him, her face wide-eyed and a little wild, but it’s better than seeing a mask again. “You lied to me! You made me think you were my mom, but you’re _not_ –” He gestures wildly at the screen. “ _She_ is, and I want to–”

 

“You want a magic cure!” Mom says, and now she’s angry, now she’s shaking with it. “You think that if you find her, she’ll suddenly be everything I’m not? You think that she’d be– that she’d–” She reaches into her pocket and thrusts out her hand again, a well-worn paper in her grip. Henry sees _Mom doesn’t love me_ _, a list by Henry Daniel Mills_ and recoils. “You think that she would love you more than I would?” Mom is still shaking, but there are tears in her eyes and her voice breaks when she asks the question.

 

Henry finds his voice, hears it small and afraid in his ears, and he doesn’t know who he’s more afraid of. “You didn’t even come to Boston to get me,” he says, and Mom reels backward. “You still won’t tell me the truth.” Emma’s hand is hovering over Mom’s back, hovering, as though she’s afraid to touch her while Henry goes on.

 

“The only truth you need to know is that I’m your _mother_!” Mom bursts out. “And you’ll– you’ll do as I say–” The words are less authoritative when she’s crying, when she’s trembling so uncontrollably, and Henry can’t watch this. Mom isn’t supposed to shatter, isn’t supposed to be this close to falling apart, and he can feel his own panic rising at this.

 

It isn’t a fire, but it feels pretty freaking close.

 

Emma says urgently, reading something on his face, “ _Henry_ –” and Henry gets up and runs, pushing past his mother through the doorway and to the stairs. Mom crumples, whispering only Emma’s name, and Henry runs down the stairs and through the foyer and out the door, desperately into the night.

 

* * *

 

_ What I know about my real mom  , a list by Henry Daniel Mills: _

  1. _~~She didn’t want me~~. She’s out here somewhere._



  

He can hear Emma running after him, calling his name, and he makes it until the next block before she catches up to him, leaning on her knees and gasping. “You’re fast, kid,” she says breathlessly. “Come on.”

 

“I’m not going back there,” Henry says stubbornly. He doesn’t know if he’s embarrassed or angry or just guilty, but he doesn’t want to be home, to hear Mom crying in the next room or to have stilted conversation where they pretend again.

 

Emma shakes her head. “You’re a piece of work, you know?” Her eyes are a little red-rimmed, too, as though she’d been crying or close to tears. “You can come home with me tonight. Mary Margaret is on some weekend camping trip with David, anyway, and I’ve got some space in the loft. Okay?”

 

“What about Mom?” Henry stares at the ground. He doesn’t want Mom alone in the house when she’d been like _that_. He just…doesn’t want to be the one there with her.

 

But Emma misunderstands. “She’s okay with it. We’ve…we’ve talked about this possibility. Before.”

 

New anger soars through Henry, red-hot and mindless. “So she can talk to you about my adoption but she can’t talk to _me_?” He makes his decision at once. “I want to go with you. But I’m not going back inside.”

 

He sits in the Bug while Mom packs up his clothes and backpack, and he pretends he doesn’t see when she steps outside to pass it to Emma. Emma sets it down on the porch for a moment and pulls Mom into a hug, and Mom folds into the embrace, her eyes closed and so tired. “Maybe it’s time,” she says, her somber voice floating through the night.

 

Emma takes a step back and doesn’t respond, scooping up Henry’s things again and moving to the Bug. Mom watches them go from the porch, her hands clasped together in front of her and her eyes dark and mournful.

 

Henry had once made a list with the silly title of _Emma Swan is my real mom_. It had been weeks ago, and he hadn’t been able to come up with anything for it beyond how awesome it would be to live with Emma. They’d eat junk food and play video games and there would never be long silences that stretch on for days, never secrets and lies that would tear them slowly apart.

 

Today, though, there’s no party or grinning Emma when she closes the door. Instead, Emma paces through the kitchen of the apartment she shares with Miss Blanchard, her face tight as though she’s holding back _something_ . “I know you’re mad at me,” Henry ventures. “But it’s not _fair_. I just want–”

 

“I know what you want,” Emma says, squeezing her hands into fists. “I just– I don’t know if _you_ do.”

 

Henry scowls at her, already disabused of the notion that Emma might have been fun to sleep over with. “Don’t treat me like I’m a kid. Mom keeps doing that and–”

 

“Your mother’s scared,” Emma says abruptly.

 

He’s heard this before. “Of me hurting her?” He drops his backpack, yanks his notebook out and holds it to him. “Why isn’t anyone afraid of how she hurt me?”

 

“We’re all afraid of that!” It’s sharp, sharper than Emma ever talks to him, and Henry retreats, hurt. Emma takes a step forward, eyes pleading. “Henry, we’re all… _god_ , terrified of screwing you up over this. You weren’t supposed to find out about your adoption from a few overheard comments. We were supposed to– you were going to be sat down one day when you were much older and your mom was going to tell you everything. Not like this.”

 

And all Henry can think to say is, “You know who my birth mom is, too, don’t you?”

 

Emma’s face tightens. She reaches for him, crouches so they’re face-to-face and he can see her earnest face. “You’re so…you’re so smart and so mature that sometimes it’s easy to forget that you’re just a _kid_. You’re ten years old, and there’s some stuff that you aren’t going to understand–”

 

“If this is supposed to make me less angry at Mom, it’s not working.” He can feel the anger rising again, the desperate fury at being so underestimated by his mother. Of course he can _handle_ it. He’s ten years old but he’d been less than a day old when he’d lost his birth mom, and he made it through _that_ , so–

 

“You’re not angry at your mother,” Emma says, and she doesn’t understand at all. She’s wobbly on her feet, her eyes fixed on his so he can’t look away, and she’s _wrong_. “Henry, you know who you’re angry at, and it isn’t Regina.”

 

He pulls violently away from her. “Of course I’m angry at Mom. She _lied_ . She’s the one I–” His voice falters under Emma’s knowing look, Emma who’d been left at the side of the road and had never even had a mom. Emma who’s positioned to understand him better than _anyone_. “I’m angry at…I’m angry at…”

 

 _Mom_ , he thinks, as Emma waits patiently. _Mom,_ and he thinks again of that picture of Mom in an immaculate pantsuit, curled around him on a couch in Storybrooke General Hospital. He thinks about being a baby in a hospital blanket in the same building as his birth mother, and his vision blurs. “I’m angry at–”

 

_What I know about my_ _real_ _birth mom_ _, a list by Henry Daniel Mills:_

  1. _~~She didn’t want me~~ ~~.~~ She’s out here somewhere._
  2. _She doesn’t want me._



  

“I’m angry at _her_ ,” he says, and he’s crying suddenly, fat tears rolling down his cheeks and his nose running and he drops his backpack on the floor as Emma waits silently in front of it. “She left me! There’s no magic or fairytale or reason why she’d just– she’d just hand me over to–” He’s gasping it out, and it _hurts_ , it hurts so much to think about, hurts in a way that it never had to think about the Lie. Because Mom had always wanted him, had always loved him, and he’d known it for real even if he hadn’t wanted to admit it. He may have doubted that she’s his mother, but he’d never doubted being her son.

 

“She never wanted me,” he chokes out. “And she’s– she _knows_ Mom, she knows Storybrooke, she could have come back any time for me–” He doesn’t know why Emma is still crouched so far from him, why she won’t hold him when he can barely stay upright. Emma is rocking on her feet still, eyes bloodshot from tears spilling down her face, too, and she doesn’t catch him when he finally drops to the ground. “I hate her. I _hate_ her! I–”

 

He curls around his notebook, around a hundred lists that say everything but the Truest Truth, and Emma finally sits beside him and strokes his back, crying right along with him, whimpering _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you, I’m sorry_ , but the only thing she says aloud is after their tears have dried, in barely a whisper, “I know.”

 

* * *

 

_Mom is in love with Emma_ _, a list by Henry Daniel Mills:_

  1. _She tells her things she won’t even tell me._
  2. _She lets Emma fuss over her even though she HATES fussing._
  3. _She laughs at Emma’s stupidest jokes._
  4. _She trusts Emma with me._



  

Emma’s on the phone with Mom upstairs while she gets his bed set up. Henry can hear her while he drinks his cocoa, arguing in a hushed tone. “He’s ready to see you– no, I’m _not_ avoiding– well, then you do it!” A pause, and then a pained, “Okay. Okay.”

 

When she comes downstairs, it’s with an easy smile on her face and no sign that she’d been fighting with Mom. “Your mother reminds you that you haven’t actually done your homework for tomorrow, and it’s almost bedtime.”

 

“I barely have _anything_ ,” he tries, and Emma gives him an unamused look. “Okay, it’s just a little bit of math. Are you any good at math?”

 

“Nope. Totally suck at it,” Emma says lightly. “When I was in school, I liked the subjects that you could bullsh– that you could bluff your way through. I was _badass_ at literature. I could analyze the hell out of any piece that I could read.”

 

“You were in school with Miss Blanchard, right?” It’s all kind of vague in his mind, that time before he’d been born when Emma had been in trouble and stumbled into Storybrooke.

 

“Briefly.” Emma laughs. If it’s a little uneasy, Henry doesn’t think much of it. Emma’s always seemed a little embarrassed by her past. “Cora was really fond of me until it became clear that I wasn’t exactly model vagrant material, and the nuns wanted me out, too. I was asked to leave school once I’d done enough to shame all of Storybrooke, and if your mom and Mary Margaret hadn’t both stepped in, I’d have probably been…in really bad shape now.”

 

“What did my mom do?” Mom _really_ hates Miss Blanchard. He can’t imagine that she’d have worked with her.

 

Emma smiles, her eyes soft and affectionate. “I was living out of my car at that point. I didn’t have anywhere to go. If I was lucky, Mary Margaret’s dad would be out on a business trip and I’d get a few days on a bed. But your mom would bring me food when I needed it. She persuaded the old sheriff to let me sleep in one of the cells at the station at night, and she used to be there before I’d fall asleep and be back in the morning.” She’s still smiling when she finishes, and Henry watches her, tugging at his lower lip with his teeth as he considers whether or not he should ask.

 

“Are you in love with her?” he asks finally.

 

Emma’s eyes widen. “I– what? I’m not–” She blinks at him. “That is _really_ not a conversation I should be having with you.”

 

“I have a list,” Henry informs her. It all adds up, and he didn’t even have to talk about all the weird stuff from before he was born.

 

Emma barks out a laugh. “Of course you do.” She wraps an arm around him, resting her cheek against his hair, and they bumble through his math homework together. “I’m going to take out the garbage,” she says when they’re done. “You get into pajamas, okay?”

 

He doesn’t get into pajamas right away. Instead he wanders through the apartment, studying the pictures on the coffee table of Emma and Miss Blanchard and David Nolan. There’s one of him with Emma and Mom, too, a little photo stuck into a much larger frame with Miss Blanchard and Emma, and he considers it for a moment with a warmth coiling inside him.

 

He peeks into the corner of the room where Miss Blanchard’s bed is, looking at the books on her shelf curiously. There are no more fairytales, though she does have all the Narnia books in a row with Redwall, and there’s her high school yearbook on the bottom shelf of the bookcase.

 

He pulls it out, flipping through it curiously. Storybrooke is small enough that Emma still has a page in the yearbook, even though she’d only been in school for a few months. Her page is pretty blank, and Henry flips back to the beginning of the student names for _Blanchard_ instead.

 

Miss Blanchard looks the same, almost, except that her hair is longer and her face rounder. There are a flurry of pictures in the corner of her page, Miss Blanchard addressing the student body and Miss Blanchard competing on the archery team, Miss Blanchard with David Nolan and Ruby from the diner and–

 

Emma’s in one of the pictures, and Henry has to squint at it to be sure that he’s seeing it right, has to turn on the light by the bed and hold the yearbook up to his face. It’s Emma. It’s definitely Emma, posing with Miss Blanchard, but he isn’t looking at her smile or her bright eyes.

 

“Henry?” Emma says, pushing the door open again, and she stands very still when she sees what he’s looking at. “Henry,” she says again, her voice terse.

 

In the picture, Emma’s stomach is distended, the dress she’s wearing hugging the curve of it. It’s unmistakable. It’s _impossible_ , but–

 

 

  1. _She invites Emma to my birthday party every single year and Emma comes._



 

 

 _Wrong list, wrong list_ . He’s been putting that on the wrong list all along, has pushed it onto Mom’s lists and Emma’s lists and never once thought about who the subject of that fact is. Emma comes to his birthday party every year. Emma had been kicked out of school for– for being _pregnant at seventeen_ , ten years ago and Henry is ten and _you know who my birth mom is, too, don’t you?_

 

He thinks about Emma stroking his back, about Emma knowing exactly whom he’d been mad at all along, and his throat constricts as they stare at each other. “Are you…?” Henry breathes and Emma takes a step back. “Are you my mom?” he whispers.

 

Emma turns on her heel and flees the apartment.

 

* * *

 

_ Emma Swan is my birth mom (Part Two)  , a list by Henry Daniel Mills: _




 

He tries filling out the list, tries finding facts and letting them run together into a conclusion like he had to calm down during the fire, but he’s too rattled. Ruby has given him cookies and he eats them mechanically, waiting for his mother to come and get him. It’s past his bedtime, but somehow, he doesn’t think he’s going to school tomorrow.

 

Mom tears into the apartment a few moments later, her eyes wide and flashing. “How long did she leave you alone in here?”

 

“It was just a minute. I was right across the street,” Ruby assures her. “Emma called me right away–”

 

“Quiet,” Mom orders, and then she must see how Henry shrinks back, and she calms her voice. “Thank you,” she says instead. “Henry, are you packed?”

 

He finds his voice, dull and hoarse. “I never unpacked.” He hadn’t even gotten into pajamas when Emma had told him to. He thinks– if he had, maybe, this would never have–

 

Mom looks at him with her eyes still swimming with concern for him, and he stands shakily, runs to her and hugs her tightly and he’d been so _angry_ but now he doesn’t know what he is anymore. He isn’t angry, not when it all finally makes sense, the way Mom hasn’t been herself around Emma since he’d gone to Boston, the way she’d been so afraid that Emma hadn’t thought she was a good mom. The way she’d said, earlier that night, _maybe it’s time_.

 

He thinks about Emma in the hospital, taking pictures of Mom with a newborn baby, and he can’t breathe.

 

They drive home in silence, but it isn’t the kind of silence that has been so overpowering lately. It’s quieter, more contemplative, and Henry sneaks glances at Mom while she sneaks glances at him.

 

He gets into pajamas once they’re home and climbs into Mom’s bed, waiting until she enters the room in soft flannel and bearing two bowls of ice cream. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she warns him, and he grins and takes a spoon, settling comfortably against the headboard beside Mom.

 

He digs into his ice cream and Mom says after a long few minutes, “I sent Emma to Boston because I thought that she might understand you better. I also thought she might tell you the truth.”

 

“She didn’t.”

 

“No. I didn’t want her to,” Mom admits, a little rueful. “I’ve always known you liked her better. I thought there might be a chance that I’d lose both of you if you knew she was your birth mother. You were always looking for a hero. Emma’s…pretty much a classic Prince Charming.”

 

“I don’t _like Emma better_ ,” Henry scoffs, and Mom smiles at him like she doesn’t believe it. “No, I… you’re my _mom_ ,” he tries to explain. Emma is one of his favorite people in the world, but he’d never once considered anyone else being his mother until he’d found out about his adoption. “And Emma left me,” he says, staring into his ice cream bowl.

 

“Emma was seventeen,” Mom says, wrapping an arm around him. “Seventeen and scared and rejected by the last people to have offered her a home. Where was she going to raise you, in the backseat of the Bug?” She strokes Henry’s arm. “She wanted to give you your best chance.”

 

“You,” Henry says, and that warmth that had coiled into him earlier is here to stay now. “You were my best chance.”

 

“I’d like to think I still am,” Mom says softly. “I know it’s been…difficult for some time. You know I haven’t had the best role model as a mother. And I didn’t think I was capable of loving for a very long time.”

 

“What changed?” Henry asks, because he knows Mom loves him, had never doubted it until the lie that feels less and less important by the minute.

 

Mom smiles at him, her heart in her eyes when she looks at him, and he knows that no mask of ice can ever conceal that from him again. “Haven’t you figured that one out by now?” she says, and she leans forward to bump his forehead with hers, lacing their fingers together. “Ten years ago, I met you.”

 

* * *

 

_Questions to ask Emma_ , _a list by Henry Daniel Mills:_

  1. _Why did you give me up?_
  2. _Why did you stay?_



 

In the morning, they drive out of town and through the winding path of the woods until they’re parking in front of a diner and gas station ten minutes from town. “Here,” Henry says, certain that they’ve come to the right place, and Mom pulls into the little side parking lot.

 

The Bug is parked in there, too, and Mom says, “This is it, isn’t it? Where Emma was found.” She glances around the shabby little area. “For all we know, her parents were coming from Storybrooke when they left her here.” She sounds a little hard, a little angry on Emma’s behalf, and Henry takes her hand and tugs her toward the diner.

 

It’s a dilapidated building, nothing like Granny’s big diner, but there are a few truckers at the tables and it’s managed to stay afloat for twenty-eight years, so there must be something good about it. Henry orders pancakes and Mom orders eggs, both of them careful to stay together at the counter without peering at the corner booth.

 

It’s only once they get their food that they make their way to the booth, and Henry slides in opposite Emma. Mom sits beside him, and Emma says, “How did you find me?”

 

“I made an educated guess,” Henry says. He fixes Emma with a narrowed glare, and she looks wearily at him. “You left me. I want you to stop leaving me.” He could have had a billion questions– he does, really– but they all boil down to that. He doesn’t know if he’s angry anymore, knowing what he does about Emma. He wants a chance to be angry, even if it’s just snapping at her now when she looks so tired.

 

Emma closes her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t– I didn’t see it like that when you were born.”

 

Henry folds his arms. His mom folds her arms like that, but he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Emma do it. “So how did you see it?”

 

“I’d just spent– you were the only constant I had in my life,” she says, and her eyes are timidly soft, wanting. “I used to curl up in the Bug with nothing but a blanket to keep me warm and feel you kicking and think _I don’t have to be alone_. I wanted you desperately. But I also knew it was selfish. I couldn’t have given you the kind of life you’d have with someone like– someone like your mom.”

 

She looks up, her eyes catching Mom’s, and she says, “When you suggested it– when I told you I was going to give the baby up– I couldn’t have kept Henry. Not when he could have had a real _mother_ instead of a terrified kid. I was so…”

 

Henry watches her, watches as Emma buries her face in her hands for a moment and then looks up, her breath catching in her throat as she meets their eyes. “I was so sure you’d never let me see either of you again, Regina. I was going to lose everyone I…everyone I loved in one fell swoop.” She looks so tired at the revelation, so uncertain. Henry had thought that Emma had fallen in love with Mom recently, that it had been years of friendship until they’d made it to _like_ and then _love_. Mom sits very still, wordless.

 

Emma plunges onward. “But you gave me a place in Henry’s life. You let me be _someone_ to him. I thought about leaving town a thousand times before Henry was born, and then you took me home from the hospital with you and I–” She fixes Henry with a desperate stare, longing as she so rarely allows herself to be around anyone but Mom. “I know you thought I abandoned you, just like I was abandoned here. But I never left, Henry. I’m never going to leave.”

 

She glances up at Mom, who’s still staring at her, and says timidly, “If that’s okay with you?”

 

Mom gets up abruptly and walks out of the diner.

 

Henry and Emma exchange a glance and it’s the same as it’s always been, the wry exchange of fondness toward Mom. It’s still Emma who’s been his friend, and he thinks that if she ever does become his other mom, it’d be just like the past week of recovery post-fire.

 

He could get used to that.

 

Mom is standing in the parking lot when they emerge, staring out into the woods, and she whirls around when Emma says, “Regina?”

 

“Ten years,” Mom says slowly.

 

Emma’s brow creases. “Regina?”

 

“ _Ten years_ .” Her voice is fierce, on this side of furious. “You’ve been keeping this from me for ten years?” She takes a step forward. “We could have had this _ten years ago_?”

 

“Had what?” Emma asks, and Mom crosses the last distance between them and kisses Emma, slipping her hands into Emma’s hair as Emma’s fall to her waist. Emma kisses her back happily, both of them swaying in the sunlight in a parking lot in the middle of nowhere, and Henry makes a face and climbs onto the back of the Bug to wait out the kissing.

 

He leans back against the windshield and tilts his face to the moon still lingering in the sky over his mothers, feeling the warmth of the sun beating down on his face.

 

* * *

 

_The last list_ , _a list by Henry Daniel Mills:_

  1. _Mom kissing Emma at breakfast EVERY morning._



  

“It’s gross,” he protests, scowling at them. “Can’t you do that when I’m not here? Or when I’m not eating?”

 

Emma tosses him his scarf, unapologetic. “Blindfold yourself. I’m not stopping this _ever_ again.” She swoops back in to slide her arms around Mom, kissing her cheek chastely, and Mom laughs and leans into her embrace. It’s sweet when it isn’t totally sickening, Henry guesses. “We have a lot of time to make up for.”

 

“Your fault,” Mom says pointedly, and Emma scoffs.

 

“ _My_ fault? You know, I would have tried this years ago,” she says conspiratorially to Henry. “But your mom used to drink too much of her cider and try to kiss me, and then she’d ban me from the house until she could look me in the eye again. I didn’t want to risk going through that again.”

 

“You never fought it,” Mom argues, twisting back to the stove. Her left hand is in Emma’s, her right frying busily as though Henry can’t see the flush of her cheeks.

 

“I thought you meant it!” Emma shoots back.

 

Mom snorts. “You’re an _idiot_.”

 

Emma swings their hands together. “Oh, and you’re any better?”

 

Mom sighs heavily. “I’m an idiot,” she concedes, and she shuts off the flame and kisses Emma again, a curtain of hair falling between them to shield Henry from more kissing. Henry steals past them to the frying pan, scooping up extra eggs and shoveling them into his mouth before Mom notices. “Our son isn’t much better,” Mom says lightly as Henry lets out a strangled gasp at how _hot_ the eggs are, panting as he hurries back to the table to wash out his mouth with cold juice.

 

That’s another one. 

 

  1. __Our son.__



 

He isn’t sure how he feels about it yet. It’s something they’re trying out, that Mom had talked to Emma about for hours a few nights ago. He’d listened at the top of the steps, crouched where they couldn’t see him, and he’d heard Mom crying and then Emma in tears, too, _I’m trying, Regina, I just– god, it’s been ten years, what right do I have–_

 

“He isn’t going to call you Mom,” Mom had murmured, and she’d sounded fiercely certain of that. Mom is still Mom, even if they’re trying new things. “You don’t have to _do_ anything. But it’s– it’s important to him that this bond between you two is recognized for what it is–”

 

She’d sounded a little shaky about it, too, and Henry had sucked in a breath and hadn’t known if he’d made the right decision at all. He’d ventured downstairs after Emma had left for some air, had curled up against Mom and closed his eyes and whispered, “It’s okay. Forget about it. It was a dumb idea.”

 

Mom had stroked his hair and hadn’t said a word for a few minutes, and Henry had fallen back into the fuzzy despair of before he’d known for a moment before he’d pulled himself out, because it had been different then than before. But Mom had said, “No. It’s not dumb at all,” and when Emma had come back, she’d helped tuck Henry back into and had sat next to him while Mom had read him a few pages from Percy Jackson.

 

It’s the new book he’s into, and he thinks for a long time about which mythological character each person in Storybrooke could be. Mom would be Artemis, he’s positive. Maybe that’d make him a demigod. He’s still thinking about it when he heads to school, and he doodles theories on paper and stares out the window at the sky. The moon has already set, but he knows that it’s a crescent again this week.

  

  1. _Ice cream on a Wednesday._



 

Wednesday is the _worst_ day of the week, and when Henry had been little, he and Mom had decided to change that. Sometimes it’s something as small as making each other Wednesday cards– Henry drawing elaborate designs and coloring them in when class feels too long, and Mom coming home with a sketch of a silly creature that he’s sure doesn’t exist (but always does). Sometimes it’s breakfast for dinner or a visit to Emma after school so Henry can ride in the patrol car while Mom sits in the back and makes fun of the car and the sheriff’s department and Emma with so much glee that Henry’s pretty sure she enjoys it more than he does. Sometimes Mom comes home with a movie and they get pizza and sit on the living floor with it and watch.

 

This week, Henry gets pulled out of class unexpectedly and sent to the office, and he trudges there, already worried about the fragile balance being upset with some new trouble. He’s tense and he’s afraid, and then he walks into the office and Mom is there. “I’m taking you out of school for a few hours,” she informs him. “We’re going for ice cream.”

 

And they do. Emma’s around so much these days, and Henry really does love it, but it’s also nice having this quiet Wednesday tradition for just him and Mom. They sit at a table at Any Given Sundae and talk about the plans for a new park where there’s a dilapidated old playground that Henry had loved, and they talk about Miss Blanchard’s skirt getting stuck to a chair today so she had to hold it to her butt when she wanted to write on the board, and they don’t talk about Emma or birth mothers or Mom having a girlfriend.

 

Somehow, they both know that those aren’t conversations for their quiet time together.

 

But Mom also picks up a movie and makes pizza for dinner, and Emma comes to that, her arm around him and her pinky linked with Mom’s hand. Henry leans into Emma’s embrace and falls asleep before the movie’s over, and he’s only half-awakened when Emma carries him upstairs.

  

  1. _Whispers in the night._



 

“Is he still out?” Mom asks when Henry’s safely in bed, Emma huffing a little from the effort of carrying him. She immediately stops when Mom’s voice floats down the hall, and Henry squirms deeper into his blanket to hide his grin. Something is wiry and flat against his side, but he doesn’t dare move to see what it is yet.

 

Emma says, “He’s getting there.” When Henry opens his eye a crack, he can see her leaning against the doorpost, watching him. Mom has a hand on the opposite doorpost, peering in at him with sleepy, content eyes. “Long day, I guess.”

 

“Long year,” Mom echoes, still with a note of melancholy in her voice. Emma reaches for her and Mom slots into her arms easily, both of them still with their eyes on Henry. He’s glad for the darkened room, where there’s no way they can see his eyes squinting open.

 

Emma sways with Mom a little, and she looks small and pale in the moonlight. “Was it all worth it?” She sounds as though she’s uncertain of what the answer might be, and Henry hurts without knowing why, closes his eyes for real and remembers the feeling of safety of being in Emma’s arms when she’d brought him here. “To get to this place?”

 

“Nothing should be worth what we went through this past year,” Mom murmurs, and Henry presses down into the bed, into the wires he’s lying, and hears Emma’s slow intake of breath. “But where we are now– maybe it is.” She laughs softly. “I don’t know. I’m happy. Are you happy?” Henry can hear her swallow. “I know we’re– we’ve moved pretty fast, but–”

 

“That first month,” Emma says abruptly. “Right after Henry was born. I thought that that was it. I didn’t even want to leave the hospital and try to…to live,” she says, and her breathing is harsher now, almost a sob. “I was all alone, and the doctors had discharged me but felt bad enough for me that they didn’t force me out of that room.”

 

“I remember,” Mom whispers. “They called me.”

 

Henry opens his eyes, sees that Emma has let go of Mom. Mom has a hand on Emma’s arm, fingers running up and down it as Emma stares at her. “So you came.” She laughs, barely a breath. “You marched back into that room with that speech about the benefits of nursing a newborn and you informed me that I was going to have to stay with you. You made me want to live again.”

 

Mom shrugs, her eyes distant. “I suppose–” She’s staring out Henry’s window, at the moon glowing in the dark. “I suppose I hadn’t really thought past the idea of having a child. I’d never really thought about what it might mean to do it alone.”

 

Emma twists to stare at her. “You never said.” She sounds chagrined, and Mom won’t meet her eyes. “I thought– I thought I was a burden. A charity case you felt like you owed for Henry.”

 

“You were my friend before you were his birth mother,” Mom reminds her, and it’s her voice that sounds small now. “I was twenty-two and overwhelmed and terrified.”

 

Emma is still gaping at Mom, and Mom lifts her chin to meet Emma’s eyes again. “I wouldn’t have left so quickly if you’d told me–” Emma shakes her head. “You did it, you know that? You did it all on your own anyway. You raised this…this awesome kid, _our_ kid, and–” The burst of emotion is too much for Emma, and she falls silent, breathing heavily. “Yeah, Regina,” she says at last. “I’m happy.”

 

Mom laces her fingers through Emma’s. “It’s late,” she murmurs. “Let’s go to bed.”

 

Emma shifts away from the door, and Henry watches as she presses her forehead to Mom’s. “One sec,” she breathes, and she steals across the room to Henry first.

 

He closes his eyes and feels the gentle, not-quite-familiar brush of her lips against his forehead, and then a far more familiar kiss that follows. He can feel exhaustion setting in as through it’s programmed into goodnight kisses, and he waits until they’re gone to roll over and pull out whatever it is that had made his bed so uncomfortable.

 

It’s his notebook. He’d forgotten to stick it into his knapsack this morning and he hadn’t even noticed that it was gone all day. He flips it open, turns past page after page of carefully written lists, until there are only empty lined papers instead.

 

He climbs out of bed and crosses the room, clutching the notebook in his hand; and he sticks it deep into the back of his bookcase, right next to Miss Blanchard’s book of fairytales.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! You can read more about how to support my writing [here!](http://coalitiongirl.tumblr.com/coffee) :)


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